Nokia, Chunghwa Telecom Prepare for 5G-Advanced Era with Expansion Deal

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Nokia announced that it has been selected by Chunghwa Telecom (CHT), in a one-year extension deal that will modernize its 5G network across the central and southern regions of Taiwan. The project aims to boost the performance, capacity, and energy efficiency of CHT’s 5G network. In particular, it will lay the foundations for CHT’s 5G-Advanced network evolution. Deployment is underway and expected to last twelve months.

Nokia will upgrade CHT’s market-leading network with solutions from its high-performance, energy-efficient 5G AirScale portfolio, including baseband, Massive MIMO radios, and Remote Radio Head products. This includes Nokia’s state-of-the-art, lightweight, and high-output Massive MIMO Habrok radios in both 32 TRX (Habrok 32) and 64 TRX (Habrok 64) versions to cover all use cases and deployment scenarios. The deal includes Nokia’s AirScale Pandion portfolio of FDD multiband remote radio heads. All of these solutions are powered by Nokia’s energy-efficient ReefShark System-on-Chip technology and provide superior coverage and capacity to CHT’s customers. Nokia will also provide services, including digital deployment, optimization, and technical support services.

CHT will also utilize Nokia's intelligent AI-powered MantaRay solutions portfolio. The deal includes MantaRay NM for improved network monitoring and management and MantaRay SON, an industry-leading network optimization and automation platform that uses self-configuring modules to boost network performance and efficiency. CHT aims to drive significant energy savings through Nokia’s advanced RAN software features by introducing innovations such as deep sleep mode, MIMO muting, and the MantaRay Energy solution, which helps optimize the RAN energy-saving features to reduce radio network power consumption significantly.  

As part of the deal, Nokia will deploy its 7250 interconnect router (IXR) to support baseband aggregation at the sites, offering the necessary scale and performance to cater to CHT's business services' growing demand and requirements.

The deal will see Nokia continue its long-term vendor partnership with CHT which has been in place from the deployment of 2G networks to the 5G era.

Dr. Chung-Yung Chia, Vice President of Network Technology Group, said: “CHT continues to evolve its 5G network to deliver best-in-class connectivity experiences to its customers and maintain our market-leading position in Taiwan. This new improved deal with our technology partner, Nokia, will prepare our network for the 5G-Advanced era with higher performance, AI-powered intelligence, and lower energy consumption.”

Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia, said: “This expanded deal will help Chunghwa Telecom enhance its network performance, capacity, and robustness and maintain its leading position and prepare for network evolution. Our energy-efficient AirScale portfolio and the AI-powered MantaRay solutions will also support CHT’s sustainability efforts by reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions.”